Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Comment entitled Health spending planned to fall in England and Scotland in 2024–25, suggesting a top-up likely, published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies on 4 March 2024, what steps he is taking to help ensure the NHS maintains (a) quality of care and (b) patient outcomes in the 2024/25 financial year.

The Spring Budget 2024 announced that the Government is protecting the day-to-day funding of the National Health Service in England, providing an extra £2.45 billion in 2024/25. This will allow the NHS to continue to focus on reducing waiting times, and will bring the NHS’s resource budget in 2024/25 to £164.9 billion. This means that NHS funding will increase from 2023/24, and equates to a real terms increase of 13% since 2019/20.

An additional £3.4 billion of capital funding announced at the budget will aid the NHS’ technological and digital transformation over three years, between 2025/26 and 2027/28. This will provide wider benefits to quality of care and patient outcomes, such as better prevention, and patients living longer and healthier lives, as a result of receiving scans earlier. Devolved administrations, including Scotland, will benefit from additional funding through the Barnett formula.